What Really Happened When Vince McMahon Took Memphis
It takes a king to know a King.
"It was me, Austin! It was me all along!" bellowed Vince McMahon, comically pulling back a shimmering velvet hood, so literally and figuratively draped in insanity as he was at the time. It was the culmination of a head-scratching 1999 ‘Greater Power’ storyline, in which The Undertaker had been conducting various acts of evil as part of a hostile takeover alongside Shane McMahon. They’d ousted Vince by threatening his daughter Stephanie, removing him from the theatre of conflict so they could get on with successfully liberating the WWF Title from Stone Cold Steve Austin.
Their ‘Corporate Ministry’ had physical dominance, the belt, and the keys to the kingdom, but Undertaker spoke of ‘Greater Power’ that motivated his satanic leadership and Shane’s oedipal quest for rulership. Vince’s reveal as the mystery man was farcical. As it turned out, the whole idea was actually just a long-con for the Chairman to get at Austin, even if it meant logic gaps you could drive a truck through and a six-month campaign of physical and emotional torture for his daughter. The over-arching payoff highlighted that the company still had humongous faith in Austin vs. Vince as their top programme.
The unprecedented growth experienced under their stewardship had led WWF back to the summit of the industry. Austin was the generation’s Hulk Hogan, and Vince himself was on equal footing with just about any top heel he’d ever promoted. McMahon’s shift to from company commentator to authoritative administrator to malevolent megalomaniac between his first Stone Cold Stunner and his most recent had been remarkably subtle for a man not terribly committed to nuance in his work.
The ‘Mr. McMahon’ persona began life as a metropolitan boss, but was quickly drawn into violent histrionics and crude one-upmanship in a selfish quest for supremacy over the anti-hero World Champion. It was a persona he’d crafted six years earlier to a tiny audience based south of the Mason-Dixon Line. In 1993, he was still all pastel suits and pompadours, but to a select few, he was corporate villain alongside his spandex sidekicks.
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